That speck of soft and moist matter between your fingers -- without a name, origin uncertain -- which you briskly roll and rub, like flour, could be rheum, mucus, or your own skin tissue stuck in your fingernails when you clawed at yourself in your sleep... That cold pool drenching your bed... Likewise, I really [...]
So when you see the eyes of the wind roar under the manes of a furious darkness, know that I, Abiku, have come again. I am the leathery meat for the boastful swallows of the bald earth. I am bony; I choke. I am the ceaseless regurgitation, a death not dying... Tell awele to gather [...]
He gallops into my dream every night Carrying sprinkles of stars on his polished armor as though a heavenly knight. He would join me in the waterbed, And we would swim till I hear the morning birds And wake with my pants wet and dripping. But back in reality, he never returns my stare. He [...]
My brother e-mails me about how, of late, people have cast words like stares that tell him he has not provided well enough for his family; that their financial struggles have been a burden, like rocks in bags on their backs they didn’t know were there. As he passed through the kitchen yesterday, Judge Judy [...]
Congo. A bongo. A drum and a joke. A man on his knees with a knife to his throat. Bombing The Congo. A Belgian pastime. Lay out the bodies and dust them with lime. Rubber, Our Mother. A tree leaking gold. Lapping that sap? King Leopold! A song without notes. Dust on the tongue. No [...]
I was set at the very onset of the olden time when history was just born engraving me on a piece of stone, diagonal to the eyes but still straight to touch the universal heart inspiring artists to handshake with me appreciating me a gorgeous part of art God-fearing to touch the dust of my [...]
You chant, plead and pour libations on tethered stones, call forth lost gems trampled beneath desecrated soil while palm trees wave to dried up sappy sap. Amulets are but charmed wishes, imaginary baits of burnt out fretful fishermen. Treasures are only worth a dime to the hungry. Listen to yourself converse as the sky sleeps, [...]
You have a head, I have a head; Hence, we are alike. But you say you are man, and I am not. Therefore, I am weak. ~ I have a brain, Just like you do. Therefore, I can think And do the things you can. But you insist that I am frail. ~ You have a [...]
While some played for chump change, she played for rain born of island people stolen to move the great machines on another stolen island once rimmed with hills and green. The vast teal sea was always near. She sang when it was blue. She went within, among the finned. It taught her to sing true, [...]
Our Grandma Uzoma forbade us from going into her kitchen after midnight. She claimed the freezer was possessed. She said one time a bag of frozen mixed vegetables pushed a carton of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and onto the floor—where the ice cream turned to liquid by morning. She said the two [...]
